By: Leila B. Gbati
A Liberian woman, Leemu Nuarpah, residing in Sweden, has revealed that a surgery she did in 1999 in Yekepa, Nimba County, nearly killed her in Sweden.
In an exclusive interview with our reporter, Leemu explained that in 1999 she had stomach pain and went to the hospital for a checkup to find out what was causing the pain.
She said a doctor named Foday Kamara at Lamco Yekepa Hospital told her that she had an appendix that required surgery.
Leemu said that the stomach pain was not severe but constant, so when Doctor Kamara told her about the operation, she agreed, and he did the surgery.
According to her, after the surgery, she was okay and started her normal life, not knowing the aftermath of the surgery.
She narrated that throughout the years in Liberia, she experienced stomach pain, but it was not severe, so she didn’t take it seriously because she had already had surgery until she moved to Sweden in December 2022.
Explaining her unfortunate situation, Leemu stated that when she moved to Sweden, the stomach pain became severe and lasted throughout the years. In 2020, 19 years later, she decided to go to the hospital to check what was happening, and doctors ran X-rays on her three different times, and the medical report revealed that she had an appendix.
Leemu indicated that she couldn’t accept the medical report to the extent that she even argued with the doctors and told them that she had surgery on the same appendix. How possible can that be for her to still have the same sickness?
“You know when you do surgery for a particular sickness and then you go back to the hospital and find out that the same sickness is still there? That is what happened to me, so when doctors told me that I had an appendix, it was shocking and unbelievable. The doctor told me they ran four different X-rays and they didn’t see anything besides the appendix, and I told him no, I can’t accept this result. I was still in denial,” she said.
She mentioned that, based on her denial, the doctor just admitted her for two days and placed her on antibiotics because of the infection from the appendix. After the treatment, she was released from the hospital and went home.
She told Images Magazine that when she went home after two days, she started experiencing the same pain, but this time it was different, so she called the ambulance and was rushed to the hospital.
Leemu said that she met different doctors on shift, and the doctor told her that she had to do emergency surgery because the appendix was ruptured.
“I never wanted to do the surgery but to go home. I was confused, but being a professional, the hospital refused to release me because they said if I had left the hospital, I was going to die,” she articulated.
Narrating further, Leemu said she agreed to do the surgery, which lasted for five hours, and she came out of the surgery successfully.
Accordingly, she said that also being in the medical field, the doctor brought pictures from the surgery, which clearly show that indeed the appendix was ruptured.
“The doctor told me that they wanted to do a small operation, but it couldn’t work because of the damage Doctor Kamara caused, so they had to open my entire stomach and take off my Intestine to dry the water. They took about 2 liters of water from my stomach; the appendix was ruptured, and the water was giving me an infection, so the doctor put me on antibiotics. The surgery was a lot,” Leemu noted.
Based on what the doctor saw when she did the surgery, Leemu said she was shocked and couldn’t believe that a doctor could just open someone’s stomach and close it without doing the proper thing.
Leemu added that the doctor asked her who and where she had done the previous surgery because she wanted to publish the story in the newspaper.
She said that the doctor also checked to see if Doctor Kamara didn’t take parts from her stomach, but thankfully everything was intact.
“My Stomach was open in the same place three times. I should have been dead a long time ago, but God, I have a big scar on my stomach with 32 stitches,” she asserted.
Leemu emphasized that “after I did the surgery here in Sweden, I had to do two additional surgeries just to fix what Doctor Kamara created. I did three surgeries and just did the last one on April 26, 2022, in Sweden”.
Looking at what she went through and the scar on her stomach, Leemu said that she doesn’t want to remember to share her story with the world.
Moreover, Leemu said that after the operations in Liberia and Sweden, she had been searching for Doctor Kamara through family and friends in
Liberia, but didn’t get his location until last year, when she saw the information on Facebook that he had died.
According to her, she was looking for the doctor to ask him what went wrong during the surgery and what led him to do what he did to her, which almost took her life.
Based on her unfortunate situation, Leemu stated that not any doctor can be trusted because she cannot believe that a medical doctor can deceive someone and slice their stomach without doing the proper thing.
However, she admonished Liberians to do proper and extra checkups at different hospitals to be shown a medical report before doing surgery.
“Maybe I was going to be on vacation when pain grabbed me and I just laid down and died”.
Meanwhile, she believed that she had normal stomach pain and went to the hospital, but Doctor Kamara deceived her into doing surgery, something she said he didn’t have any idea about.
“Since I did the surgery in Sweden, this April will make it one year. I am due to come to Liberia anytime soon, and when I do, I will check on other doctors who work with Doctor Kamara in the hospital because I still want them to hear my story. I will also speak to the media on this because people need to be careful in Liberia, especially doctors who claim to be surgeons. Doctors in Liberia need to be sincere with people. If you are not able to do surgery, tell the person to find another way out because every time people get health issues, the wrong medical treatment is not right for them. I am telling my story now because I am alive. I wanted to ask this doctor what he did to me. I have serious trust issues with doctors in Liberia to the extent that if they prescribe medicine, I will have to read about it or ask questions before taking it”.
